The ex-Mrs Abramovich has the builders in as she prepares her post-Roman empire

Last updated at 14:59 17 May 2007

The former wife of Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich is creating a £10million home in one of London's finest squares.

Irina Abramovich is spending part of her £155 million settlement renovating the five-storey house he gave her.

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She has demolished a house in Ebury Mews at the back of her Georgian home in Belgravia's Chester Square in order to rebuild and link the two properties. A roof terrace will top the new building.

Architects have re-designed the house in Ebury Mews so that it becomes an integral part of the main home.

Linking the properties will allow Mrs Abramovich, 39, along with the couple's five children, to enter through a new garage, away from prying eyes.

A planning application to carry out the work was submitted to Westminster council in January.

In March, it emerged the couple were to split following the energy magnate's friendship with model Daria Zhukova, 24.

Mrs Abramovich also owns the £9.3 million house immediately next to her home in Chester Square and it is thought she may knock the two together.

The Chester Square houses and the Ebury Mews property are understood to have been transferred into Mrs Abramovich's name as part of the divorce settlement.

The properties are in Belgravia's conservation area but Westminster's planning officials decided that so much of the mews house had already been altered by previous owners that there was "little or no significant historic fabric remaining" and gave the go-ahead for demolition.

Mrs Abramovich's builders will install traditional timber sash windows instead of the casement windows that had been used in the mews house, in keeping with the area's Georgian architecture.

Mr Abramovich is understood to have the largest property portfolio of any Russian in London, having spent nearly £50 million in the past few years.

He also owns Fyning Hill, an £18 million, 1,500 acre estate in West Sussex, which he bought in 2000.

His combined fortune from oil and pharmaceuticals was recently estimated at £10.6billion by Russian magazine Finans.

Seventeen years ago, when Mr Abramovich was struggling to establish himself as a businessman, he left his first wife Olga with a tworoom flat furnished with a sofa bed in a rundown area of Moscow.